All the Hopeful Lovers (30 page)

I’m young. I want to live. You love or you die. Hold me in your arms, I’m not asking for too much. Only life.

A road of tidy red-brick semis, fitfully illuminated by street lamps. Cars parked nose to tail along the kerb. Lit windows restless with the jumpy glow of television screens.

Meg drives slowly, looking for house numbers on gates and doors, failing to find or to read a single one. Then she sees the red pick-up that the plumber drives, and so locates his house, Number 45.

Strange to be paying a social call on her plumber, but life has become strange. Or gone back to the way it was: exile once more. The day she learned her brother was leaving their shared room. The night when there came no answering whisper to her whisper.

Grateful for the chance to be somewhere new, to get out of her flat. Two nights sleepless in the bed where once—

Her mind has learned to flinch. Turn away from that memory. Closer than a memory: the pain with her every moment of the day, cold as winter air. And waiting beyond the pain the deeper darkness, a night sky of fear without end.

Alone for ever. Alone for ever.

Not too proud then to accept the plumber’s invitation. No, no pride. At work she keeps her eyes averted, not wanting to see the pity in their eyes. She takes her lunch alone.

There is no one in all the world who needs me.

She finds a space at last where she can park, some way from Matt’s house. Out on the pavement she pulls her coat tight round her, a dark red knee-length wool coat from Hobbs. She bought it the day Tom said they might go to Paris, she thinks of it as her smart coat. And here she is, wearing it to call on a plumber who lives on the Neville estate.

But the thought of Matt Early is comforting to her. His quietness and tidiness in doing his work; his modesty, the way he looks down at the ground, his soft-spoken voice; his air of authenticity, that he is what he is; and lastly a quality in him she guesses at, but which she is sure he possesses, which she wants to call goodness. Meg hungers for goodness. All the pain she feels over Tom has turned inwards and is lacerating her with self-punishment. She blames herself entirely. She allowed herself to believe a lie, and it’s the lie that hurts far more than the sexual transgression. She allowed herself to believe that Tom wanted her – no call to use the word ‘love’, no place for the word ‘love’ – when all he wanted was ‘it’. She feels tarnished by the lie, dirtied by it. She has no one she can tell. Nor does she want to tell. She has no appetite for wails of female solidarity, Oh men are all the same, men are only ever after one thing. She entered on the affair with her eyes open, she was not deceived by Tom. She was deceived by herself.

A little low gate leads into a paved path across a neatly maintained front garden. Curtains drawn in the lit front room. A front door with a panel of frosted glass. She rings the bell.

Matt is a good man, and he plays the violin. In his presence she will be clean again. He has sought her company, and she is grateful. All here is ordinary, all is decent.

The door opens and there he is, blinking a little, as if roused from sleep. The sounds of a television. She can tell from his face that he had not been sure she would come, and is a little amazed to see her.

‘Come in, come in,’ he says. ‘So you found us all right?’

‘Yes. No problem.’

‘My mother is watching TV. She doesn’t get about so well. I have to look after her a bit.’

He leads Meg into the lounge. Here a small red-haired woman is sitting in a large armchair with a rug over her lap and a supper tray on the table by her side, watching
Emmerdale
. She turns her eyes from the screen to give Meg a look of close appraisal.

‘Mum, this is Meg. She’s come to see my violins.’

‘Nice to meet you, I’m sure,’ says Mrs Early. ‘So you like violins?’

‘I like music,’ says Meg.

‘Music, is it?’ says Mrs Early, as if she isn’t fooled for one moment by Meg’s fabrications.

‘We’ll leave you to your TV,’ says Matt, beckoning Meg to follow him.

‘Yes, I expect you will,’ says Mrs Early.

Matt goes through the kitchen and out the back door. Meg follows.

‘Best to leave her alone,’ he says apologetically. ‘She’s not used to company.’

‘Does she have health problems?’ says Meg. Something about the rug puts her in mind of patients in hospitals.

‘She’s got a spot of arthritis. But she’s got too much time and not enough to do, if you really want to know.’

He crosses the back garden to a large shed. He takes out a key and unlocks the door.

‘Best to keep your coat on. I’ve got an electric radiator out here, but I don’t keep the place all that warm.’

He switches on lights. The shed is big and crowded, but in a neat and orderly way. Every inch of wall space has its shelf or rack or hook, holding instruments, tools, and materials for the making of violins. The violins themselves lie on pegs, row upon row, reaching up to the ceiling.

‘Heavens!’ exclaims Meg. ‘How many violins did you say you have?’

‘About forty,’ says Matt. ‘But most of them are waiting to be restored.’

‘Can some of them be played?’

‘One or two.’

He takes one down from the rack, and reaches for a bow.

‘This one’s my favourite because it’s the first one I ever restored. I bought it for five pounds. I’ve kept it ever since.’

He runs the bow over the strings, his head cocked to one side to hold the violin in place. The strings sing.

‘The end block and the end ribs were out of alignment. I re-bushed the peg holes and fitted new pegs.’

He plays a few soft sweet notes.

‘I was ten years old.’

Meg is captivated. Matt has become lighter and surer, he smiles as he handles the violin. He knows exactly what to do, she thinks. He has perfect touch.

‘That is so incredible,’ she says. ‘You were only a boy!’

‘I grew up with fiddles. My dad played the fiddle. Just for his own pleasure, nothing special. But he’d play at barn dances and the like. Mum used to say she was a fiddle widow.’

‘Your dad’s dead, then?’

‘Yes. Dad left us, oh, ten years ago now.’

He plays a light tune on the violin, one she recognizes but can’t name.

‘What’s that?’

‘Bobby Shafto.’

‘So do you play at barn dances?’

‘No, I don’t do any of that.’

He says it as if it’s self-evident that such a venture is beyond his capabilities.

‘Mostly I just pick up damaged instruments and work on them.’

He puts away the violin he’s been playing and shows her examples of his work.

‘Like this one here. The front has split. That’s the most common damage you get. I take the front off and reglue it, then varnish and polish. You’d never know it had been broken. See this? It’s a Jesse Dennis, made in the 1820s. I picked it up at a car boot sale in Brighton, I gave him £40 cash for it, only a year or so ago. By the time I’m done with it that’ll be a valuable instrument.’

‘Will you sell it?’

‘Most likely send it up to Bonham’s for auction.’

Meg looks round the shed and pictures Matt at work here evening after evening, all on his own. There’s a kettle, a water keg, a radio, an electric heater. A kitchen chair. A stack of newspapers. It’s a little world in here.

‘You must miss your dad,’ she says.

‘Yes.’

He’s looking down at the floor. Without a word, without any special expression on his face, she can still pick up how much he misses his father. There’s a delicacy about him that she respects.

An electric bell buzzes sharply, two buzzes.

‘That’s Mum,’ he says.

‘Does it mean she wants you?’

‘Yes.’

He makes no move to leave the shed. Instead he takes down another of his violins, rests it on his shoulder, and starts to tune the strings.

‘Don’t mind about me. If you need to go to her.’

‘She can wait.’

He completes the tuning.

‘This is Handel.’

He launches into a skipping, leaping tune that turns teasing and lyrical as he plays on. He plays with a slight frown on his face, swaying his body to the movements of his bow-arm. The sound is powerful, rich, inspirational. Listening to it Meg feels that even she, defiled as she is, can be cleansed and redeemed.

When Matt plays the violin he is no longer a big slow awkward man, lumbering through her flat in his socks. He becomes sure and graceful. The music flows from him as if it’s the pure expression of his spirit.

The bell rings again. He stops playing.

‘She won’t let me alone,’ he says. ‘I’d better go to her. You stay here. I won’t be long.’

He leaves her in the shed.

Meg sits on the only chair and waits for his return. As she waits she thinks about him, and how easy she finds it to be with him. It’s because he’s so unassertive, maybe. You don’t have to be any kind of person with him to feel you’re … what?

To feel he approves of you. To feel he likes you.

So do I want him to like me?

All at once she confronts the obvious simple fact that has been present throughout, the fact that more than any other makes her feel at ease in his company: Matt is courting her.

She doesn’t know how else to express it. She could say: he loves me and wants me to love him; but the claim is too great. This is a tentative process. A courtship. Extraordinary as it seems, she is quite sure she’s right. It’s not so much what he says or does as the feeling he gives her about herself. He makes her feel approved.

This changes everything. Ridiculously she finds she now feels nervous. What is there to be afraid of? And yet when he returns to the shed she knows she’ll blush and not be able to look him in the eye. She’s never been able to flirt. The thought that some form of modest flirting might be appropriate paralyses her.

What she needs now is to be in his company while other things are going on. Alone together is frightening. She fears her own social incompetence, she knows that under pressure she’ll freeze up. Better to be with him among other people.

So I want to be with him, then?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. No doubt about that. This good man’s admiration and respect is what she craves. His strong arm can pull her up out of the pit into which she has fallen. How wonderful, how providential, that he should enter her life on the same day that Tom left it.

Still not back from seeing to his old mother. Maybe she’s had a fall. Maybe it’s an emergency and Matt can’t leave her until an ambulance comes. Better to join them in the house. At least that way they won’t be alone together.

Odd how now that I think of him that way I don’t want to be alone with him.

She turns off the electric heater and finds the light switch, turning off the lights as she pulls the shed door shut behind her. The glow from the kitchen window throws a long beam across the garden, guiding her to the back door. The door is ajar.

As she comes close she hears raised voices from within. Matt is shouting at his mother.

‘You don’t know anything!’ he’s shouting. ‘I’m not listening to you because you don’t know anything!’

‘What’s she doing out in that shed with you?’ says Mrs Early, her voice shrill and undaunted. ‘She’s no better than she should be.’

‘Just shut up! I’m not listening to this!’

‘I know her type. She can see what a big fool you are. She’ll get what she wants out of you, no trouble. I’m only trying to warn you, Matthew. Women like her eat big fools like you for dinner.’

‘I’m not listening. I’m going back to my shed.’

Meg, listening, backs away from the door. She doesn’t want to be alone with Matt. She doesn’t want to be anywhere with Matt. His mother has seen what he doesn’t see: she’s no better than she should be. Women see that sort of thing. She saw it right away. She saw the signs all over her body, the body she had given so wantonly to Tom even though he cared nothing for her. She could smell her desperation.

Matt comes out, shaking with anger, and finds Meg in the back garden, shaking too, with the cold.

‘I have to go,’ she says quickly.

‘No!’

It comes out like a cry of anguish.

‘Thank you so much.’

She hurries into the kitchen. He comes after her.

‘Let me give you something. A cup of tea.’

‘No, really. I have to go now.’

She can think of no excuse, and sees she needs none. The look of agony on his face tells her he understands. She heard his mother’s taunts.

‘You mustn’t pay any attention to her,’ he says to her. ‘She’s not all there.’

But she’s sharp enough to know trash when she sees it.

‘It’s not that,’ says Meg.

Impossible to say what it is. Impossible to say, I’m dirty and you’re clean.

‘I can hear every word,’ says Mrs Early from the lounge.

‘You keep out of this,’ says Matt.

‘I have to go,’ says Meg, moving towards the lounge.